VidStar

Applicant(s)

Description

PROBLEM: Why does video still play a supporting role in most news packages when it deserves to be the star?
It's because most news sites are stuck in a rut when it comes to news package display. Video is placed at the top, bottom or right rail of an article page in order to bundle content together, even when the narrative is strong enough for the video to stand alone. But that's about to change.
FEATURES: VidStar offers a sophisticated and layered video experience for users, and an elegant solution for content creators. Related content is embedded through the video experience. This frees the video - it can travel across any platform or live on any website page. As the viewer watches a VidStar video story, notifications appear along the timeline at relevant moments, indicating a dataviz, conversation thread, story, image gallery, etc. is available, and chooses when to experience the supplemental material. The experience is interactive without being intrusive and distracting. The user has the choice to pause the video to launch the notifications as they appear, or to watch them after viewing the full video.
VidStar creates full content packages within the video experience, allowing video storytelling to finally rise to the starring role it deserves.
NEXT STEPS
This tool is scalable, responsive and flexible; with some further development, it can be applied across a variety of digital platforms. The code for VidStar can serve as a customizable template for data entered by reporters into a Google spreadsheet, for example, similar to the tool TimelineJS. While we're early in the development process, creating a workable version of this tool for the Daily News website is possible within a matter of months.
LINKS
Link to Prototype mobile demo: https://marvelapp.com/8f0bh6
Link to working prototype: http://7dd8c72e.ngrok.com/